


The Skeleton Tree

by Disco (moistdrippings)



Category: Firefly, Serenity (2005)
Genre: Bad Science, Canon-compliant skeleton proposal, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Serenity, brief skeleton aftercare, gratuitous skeletons, italics abuse, soulful tree fluff, subtle velociraptor angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-30
Updated: 2016-04-30
Packaged: 2018-06-05 08:57:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6698317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moistdrippings/pseuds/Disco
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mal is not afraid of trees, River most likely isn't actually going to marry a skeleton, Simon probably won't let Jayne die from an allergic reaction to space pollen and alien mosquitos, and a lesson in not buying discount communicators from sketchy sources is learned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Skeleton Tree

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DNA (CatsAndHounds)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatsAndHounds/gifts).



> This was originally meant as part of a Valentine's Day exchange, and written with that in mind. I hope my recipient still gets some enjoyment out of this, despite it being more than two months after Valentine's Day now. <3
> 
> I would also like to apologize if I made any mistakes in my Chinese. I attempted to lift it from the show, to keep it at least in line with their usage. You can hover over any of those phrases to see their meaning (unless you are in mobile, in which case, please see the end notes for translations).

Under normal circumstances, there would be no work for the crew of the Serenity on Gaea. She was a planet unlike any other in the known 'Verse: though her terraforming went wrong, like it did on so many other rocks the earliest settlers from Earth-That-Was touched down on, it went wrong in an entirely unique way. Where on other moons and planets the process of making the air breathable had stripped the land of whatever fertility it had, where the regulation of climates had turned everything dry, on Gaea the terraforming had almost the opposite effect. After years of work turning rock into soil and collecting moisture into streams, the planet had accepted its fate almost too readily, the plant life and waterways spilling forth and growing into the sky so quickly they could not be controlled. Gaea had been abandoned for more manageable prospects, and in the wake of humanity's influence she had grown into a lush jungle planet. Left alone, she had even evolved new life from the old, with a number of insect, bird, and reptile species native only to her.

Mal found the whole thing extremely discomfiting. It didn't feel right, a whole planet growing on its own. Not that he was particularly fond of the rigid hand the Alliance put to the core planets' growth; he didn't like neat lines of trees and checkerboard farms either. At least those were predictable, though; familiar, and obviously under control. And the deserts! He would have taken a near-barren moon any day; he knew what he was getting there, and nothing growing out of the ground would stand in his way or pose him any kind of risk.

River's obvious glee when he said they'd be landing there – well, trying to land, anyway – did not help matters.

"It's a naked planet," she said, her voice rising with each word. "Stripped to the nerves. Neurons and nerve endings firing at will without anyone's say-so. Nobody's civilized it."

"Then she'll be right at home," Jayne grunted. Simon shot him a truly unpleasant look.

"I will." Tracing a finger over the wood of the table, River beamed at him. "I've been too civilized. It's high time I communed with the trees."

"It does sorta sound like it could be fun, for a little while," Kaylee said. River thanked her with teeth bared in a manic smile.

"Ain't going there for fun," Mal snapped. "We've got work to do. Benefactor from Highgate says there's a plant of some kind what only grows on Gaea, and he wants us to bring as much of it back to him as we can carry."

"What's he want it for?" Zoe asked.

"Don't know. Don't particularly care. As long as we bring him back cratefuls of it, we get paid."

And that was that, as far as he was concerned. They each got a look at the detailed pictures and notes their client provided, memorizing the look of the plant down to the prickly leaves and dramatically curved purple petals, and went about seeing that they got to Gaea as quick as possible and as prepared to set into the truest wilderness they were likely to know as they could be. Simon worried at him about potential allergic reactions and poisonous plant life, but Mal brushed it off and told him to go tend to his sister. Simon did, but not before leveling a look at him for a long moment, the sort of look that said he thought he knew better than Mal what was making him snappish. With the bounty off his and his sister's heads, it seemed like he'd taken to worrying about things he didn't need to, seeing problems where there were none.

Mal didn't have any problems, except not having everyone's concentration and needing more than a few new parts for his ship, and that was about the standard set of problems on the Serenity. It didn't have anything to do with anything else.

* * *

The surface of Gaea was so disturbingly lush it was hard to find a place to land.

"There!" River said, pointing out at something.

They were flying low enough to see individual trees, but still he couldn't find what she was pointing at. All he could see was an endless sea of flora that was hazardous to the health of his ship. "Place to land?"

River rolled her head toward him, giving him a disgruntled look from an odd angle. "That's all you think about, isn't it?"

"At the moment it is, yeah."

"Men." She picked up her head and started turning the ship with a sigh. Mal had half a mind to override the controls; she'd steered them nearly into a cliffside before, and she wasn't even looking at where she was going. She was peering right at Wash's dinosaurs, which still commanded prime space on the control panel. Even so, she held the ship steady and smooth, and in almost no time at all she was telling him there was a clear spot to land just over the next ridge.

Mal did take over then, but River didn't seem to mind. She picked up one of the toys, running it through the air and making little noises at it.

"Lost forever," she murmured, voice low, "and without any say where. Such a shame."

* * *

Trouble started nearly the moment they set foot on Gaea's surface, as Mal had suspected it might.

The trees loomed menacingly over them, and the grasses and wild plants tangled up around their knees. Mal was busy handing out long-range communicators to his crew when he heard the first warning sign: Kaylee's voice, rising out of the weeds, crying, "Jayne! There's something wrong with him, Simon!"

Mal pressed his fingertips to his eyes, dragging them down over his face. They hadn't been landed more than half an hour; he'd hoped against hope they might at least manage an hour before something went terrifically wrong.

He followed Simon and Zoe as they rushed to Jayne's side, and what Mal saw was both horrible and hilarious: Jayne's face was swollen up like he'd been knocked around by a thousand tiny little fists, lumps popping up on his cheeks and neck. His wheezing, gasping breath was marginally less hilarious, but Simon's calm nature made panicking feel unnecessary.

"It's an allergic reaction. A pretty extreme one." Simon pulled a vial out of the satchel he'd packed to the brim for their outing, pushing it into a hypogun. Jayne swatted a hand ineffectively at it, but Simon caught him in the upper arm without much trouble, and after a long, tense moment, Jayne sucked in a deep, gasping breath and promptly passed out.

Kaylee yelped and knelt down to push away the grass hanging around his face, patting his cheeks before looking up at Simon. "Is he gonna be okay?"

Simon slid the hypogun into his satchel like he was holstering a real firearm. "The anaphylaxis is under control, but I can't say for sure if the swelling is going to improve on its own or not without knowing what cause it. There's a thousand possible allergens out here. We need to get him into a sterile space inside."

Zoe had joined Kaylee kneeling at Jayne's side, and took that as her cue to swing a limp arm over her shoulders and haul him up. Kaylee mimicked her on his other side, though her height meant she didn't take all that much of his weight off Zoe anyway. "The infirmary?" Zoe asked.

Simon nodded. "We'll keep him under observation—"

"Hey," Kaylee interrupted, jabbing a finger toward the trees and slumping further under Jayne's weight, "what's River up to?"

Simon twisted around much faster than he'd gone to Jayne's side, just in time to see River disappear into the trees. Without a second's hesitation, he broke into a run after her. " _Go shi!_ River!"

"Aw, hell." Mal turned to Kaylee and Zoe. "You get him to the infirmary. Keep your communicators on."

They stared after him as he turned to follow Simon after his sister, but he didn't look back to tell them again.

* * *

Mal caught up with Simon at the base of a gnarled mass that he at first mistook for a tree all on its own, but which was, in fact, only a root that broken up from the ground before it had driven itself back into the soil. Simon was panting, taking great gasping breaths that sounded half-panicked. Mal wasn't all that much better himself, though he had mostly recovered by the time Simon regained his voice.

"She's so fast," he wheezed, and coughed a little at the effort it took. Mal patted him on the back twice. Simon took another great, heaving breath. "I lost her."

"'Course you did," Mal said. Simon shot him a betrayed look. "You're out here runnin' through the trees like a damned fool. She's tiny and graceful, like some kinda creature what's meant to be out here. You'd've been better off lettin' us look for her with the tech on Serenity."

"Oh god." Simon ran a hand over his face, wiping sweat down his cheek. "I just got us lost out here, didn't I?"

Mal huffed a laugh. "Nah. This here's precisely why I passed out these communicators." He grabbed his from his belt and raised it up.

"Those things look ancient," Simon said. "You're sure they're gonna work?"

"'Course I am." Mal flicked it on, and brought it to his mouth to speak. "Kaylee, Zoe, you read me?"

He waited a moment. They only heard static.

He tried again. "How's Jayne holdin' up?"

Still nothing. Simon frowned, taking it from his hand. "Hold on. River and I had something like these when we were kids. They worked pretty far in the city." He twisted a dial, which promptly fell off into his palm.

" _Tai kong suo you di xing qui dou said jin wo de pi gu!_ " Mal snatched it back, attempting to jam the dial back into place, but it only fell off and got lost in the underbrush. "These were supposed to work at twice the distance we've run. Must be these trees interfering with the signal."

"That must be it," Simon agreed dryly.

"Don't take no tone with me." Mal jabbed a finger at him. "I'm not the one what got us lost in some kinda jungle labyrinth here."

Simon held up his palms. "No tone intended. You're right."

"You're damn right I'm right!" Mal said, and then realized he'd raised his voice and felt a little embarrassed about it. He cleared his throat, letting it drop back to a normal volume. "Captain's always right. And they'll find us once they notice that we're not back in a reasonable timeframe."

Simon had deflated somewhat, and slumped back against the great root he'd been leaning on. "River's still out there."

Mal hadn't forgotten. "She was settin' out in a pretty straight path, wasn't she?"

Simon nodded. When Mal held out a hand, he took it, letting himself be hauled up into a standing position again. "You don't have to help me look for her. You could..." He trailed off.

"Wait around in this mess of unruly who-knows-what? I'd rather not, if it's all the same. 'Sides, River's part of the crew." He started to say that he couldn't let another pilot go, but found the words lodged in his throat. He swallowed them back down and turned to follow River's trail.

"She was heading that way," Simon said, pointing in an entirely different direction.

"I knew that."

* * *

The thing about a wild, unfamiliar forest was that every part of it just looked like more wild, unfamiliar forest. Mal had the deeply unsettling feeling that they were stuck in some kind of hellish loop, passing the same trees and shrubs over and over again while low branches snapped and whacked at their arms and legs. River hadn't left any kind of visible trail either, and so they trudged through underbrush that twisted around their ankles simply hoping they were heading in the right direction, and that she hadn't made some sort of unexpected turn.

They didn't speak much at first; the sound of the rustling plant life at their knees and Simon's labored breathing were all Mal had to listen to until, out of desperation for some kind of distraction from his suspicions — definitely not fears — about the trees, he asked, "You're treating my engineer right, aren't you?"

Simon started at the question, stumbling and catching himself on Mal's arm. Mal yanked him back to his feet, and they kept moving determinedly onward. "Um. In what respect do you mean?"

Mal slid his eyes over to Simon, narrowing them slightly. "I think you know my meaning."

Simon flushed slightly. It amused Mal; it was so easy to fluster him, and the hint of red at his cheeks was a great reminder that he — and all the other core planet folk — had blood in him like everybody else. "I did my best to treat her with courtesy and respect, but it didn't work out. She's the one that ended it, before you get any ideas."

"You wouldn't have had the spine to," Mal said, as though it were obvious.

"I would!" Simon protested.

Mal scoffed. "Way you went tongue-tied 'round her? Nah. You'd have had grandkids before you got around to suggesting it wasn't working."

Simon's face went redder, and Mal fought back a smile. "It was mutual, all right?"

Mal's eyebrows shot up. "Thought you said she ended it?"

"I— she did, but we— we were on the same page. She brought it up, and I agreed. A few months ago."

That stopped Mal in his tracks. Simon was a few steps ahead of him when he noticed and turned to face him, perplexed. "I could swear I heard the two of you gettin' up to something in the engine room a couple weeks back."

Simon's face was lit up with red now, and he turned away again. "It... ah... We ended the romantic aspect of our relationship before we... ended other parts of it."

"Mutually?" Mal asked, dubious.

"Mutually," Simon said, still red but holding his chin up. "We're both adults, Mal. She wanted... satisfaction, and I wanted to give it to her, even when we agreed it wouldn't work out on other levels."

Mal felt he might be needing to have a talk about that with Kaylee later, to be sure, but he kept that to himself. "Satisfaction," he repeated instead.

Simon kept his chin up, sticking by his answer. He joined Mal as he started walking again. "Was that an issue for you and Inara? Satis... Sex?"

"That is none of your gorram business," Mal snapped. He stormed forward, letting reedy branches whip at his face as he powered through the untamed woods.

Untamed, he thought to himself, but unfortunately not un-Tam'd.

He was several feet ahead of Simon when he stopped again, turning to face him and jabbing a finger at him. "But for your information, she had no complaints, because we didn't."

"You didn't...?" Simon's face was pale again, and Mal sort of missed the upper hand he'd had when making him blush. Simon could be a force to be reckoned with when he wasn't tipped a little off balance — just a little.

"Have sex," Mal clarified. "We were tryin' to be romantic-like. Didn't want it to get too much like business or get clouded up with separating what our minds were feeling and our bodies were thinking."

He paused, and Simon raised an eyebrow at him. Mal turned away, pushing forward again.

"S'how she said it, anyway. Me, I wanted to prove to her I wasn't just jealous of her clients."

"You could have stood to call her a whore a little less often, then."

"Hey, it's not like I meant nothing by that. She knew I didn't." Simon didn't have a reply for that, and Mal found himself barreling on — verbally instead of physically this time — thrown as off-balance as he'd had Simon. "She did know. We had talks about it. A lot of talks. And we did kiss."

"A kiss can mean a lot," Simon said, as though he was placating them.

It had exactly the opposite effect, stirring Mal right back up. "'Course it can. It could mean all sorts of things. Things like, 'hey, I've tongue-danced my way 'cross the 'Verse so I know just from this that we ain't never going to find ourselves any kind of satisfaction sexually, which is to say that I won't, because that's sort of my job and—' That is terrifying."

Simon didn't seem to notice Mal had stopped for a moment, and then he turned to look back at him. "Really? You were intimidated by her work?"

"What?" Mal shook himself — figuratively, and then literally, but just his head. "No, not that. _That_."

 _That_ was the most enormous tree Mal had ever seen in his life, a hulking mass of knobby grey-brown bark and twisting vines taller than some Alliance ships. Its root system sprawled out far enough to push away at the encroaching forest, leaving it with a space around its base that wasn't quite wide enough to call a clearing, but which highlighted its presence.

Of course, it wasn't the tree itself that was terrifying, not really. Mal was not afraid of trees. It was, instead, the skull protruding from the tree's bark, several feet off the ground, that had him unsettled, along with a mess of other bones, some scattered amongst the roots, some sinking deeper into the hungry wood.

And there was Simon, staring at it with his mouth open and walking toward it like he had any kind of business getting up close and personal with dead people in trees.

Mal grabbed him by the arm. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"I was just taking a closer look." Simon pulled against his hold, but not with much force. He stopped when Mal held him tighter, looking back. " _Shuh muh?_ "

"Why do you need to look? It's just a horrifically creepifying corpse. You want horrifically creepifying, you've got your sister to look for."

Simon's expression brightened slightly, his lips curving in amusement. "Captain, are you scared?"

Mal bristled, letting him go abruptly. "Forgive me for wanting to find _your_ sister. We only got ourselves lost in these woods looking for her, but if you're too busy poking dead things with sticks — of which there are plenty here, if you need one — you go right ahead."

Simon's mouth twisted up more in amusement, like he could hardly hold it in. He bent low, sticking his hand down into the tangled mess of roots at their feet, and Mal held his breath to keep from warning him about what sorts of things could be hidden under there.

When Simon stood upright again, he was holding a boot — one of River's, its clasps neatly undone.

"River will be back," Simon said, crouching low to fish out the boot's companion. "She put these here on purpose; she'll come back this way to get them. We just need to wait here."

"You sound awfully sure of a crazy girl's intent," Mal said, and immediately wished he could take it back.

Somehow, Simon didn't seem bothered. He walked up closer to the tree's base — and to the corpse it held — and sat down, leaning against it. "I am sure. She's been a lot more stable recently."

Mal walked a little closer, but couldn't quite bring himself to get within arm's reach of any of the bones. "Yesterday she spent two hours throwing spoons at a wall to test their gravity."

"Before we went to Miranda, it would have been knives."

Mal tipped his head. "Fair point."

Simon tipped his head back against the tree, running fingertips over its bark. "She'll always be... the way she is — there's no going back on what was done to her — but she's more at peace now. And a big part of that is thanks to you."

"I didn't do nothing anyone with half a brain wouldn't have done."

Simon smiled, looking up at him. "Yes, you did. You cared for her. You trusted her. You trusted _me_."

"Then I didn't do nothing anyone with _out_ half a brain wouldn't have done. Was just my desire to take the Alliance down a peg what kept me going."

"If you say so." He kept stroking his fingers over the bark, contemplative. "You gave us a home, though. A place to come back to. I didn't think we were ever going to have that again. I... I don't think I've thanked you for that. I don't know if I could thank you enough."

Mal felt stuck. He hadn't expected a heart-to-heart with Simon when he'd followed him into the trees, especially after their little spat about relationships. "You don't need to thank me. You're family, you and River."

Something in Simon's expression softened, bringing his smile to his eyes. "Are we?"

"'Course you are." Mal took another step closer, resolutely ignoring the bones around them, and sat, propping his legs up over sprawling roots. "Family's got nothing to do with blood, not really. It's more to do with wanting to stick around somebody through whatever tries to separate you, no matter how moonbrained it may be. Even if it means putting up with the likes of some fancible doctor and his crazy psychic sister."

"Even if it means putting up with a surly outlaw and his clunker of a ship?"

"Even then," Mal agreed.

"I suppose you're right, then."

Simon looked away, then, his eyes traveling over the scattered bones. There wasn't all that much left of whoever had been unfortunate enough to die there — probably the only person who never made it off planet, Mal thought.

"I almost feel like we should bury her."

"Seems to me like it'd be disrespectful to touch a stranger's bones," Mal said. He couldn't help but look now; up close, the ones not embedded in the tree looked like they could be anybody's bones. "'Specially since we don't have all of 'em."

Simon hummed, not quite agreeing or disagreeing. "I suppose it does seem like the whole planet could be one peaceful resting place, anyway."

"There's some folk on Theophrastus who think being put to rest with a tree is the way to do it, anyway." He chanced a look at the skull again, and tried to imagine an entire cemetery full of bones in trees. He had to fight back a shudder at the thought. "They say trees have souls what protect ours, if their roots can take from us."

"If any tree has a soul, it's this one," Simon said, craning his neck back to look up at it.

Mal looked up, too, and felt momentarily dizzy when he realized he couldn't see the top of it from where they were; it reached up toward the atmosphere like a great, many-fingered hand, and the appendages of its neighbors surrounded it, swallowing it in a cloud of leaves and vines. He could only see bits of sky. "I'd say no tree's got a soul, then."

When he looked down, Simon suddenly seemed much closer, leaning into his space. He'd have moved back, but Simon had a hand on his shoulder, and then another on his jaw, and by the time Mal could process just what was going on, Simon was kissing him — gentle, chaste.

It was a kiss that said a lot of things. It said "thank you" and "don't go", and it asked for more.

But Simon pulled back from him after just a moment, not looking for anything more. Yet, anyway.

"That was," Mal began, and then stopped. Unexpected? Sure. Nice? Definitely. He didn't know what else.

"That," Simon said, rising form his spot against the tree, "was an offer. I know you like to think before you take anyone up on their offers, so you can think. I'm going to bury these bones. I know the tree's already fed on them, but..."

Mal didn't argue; instead, he rose, helping Simon to collect what they could, careful and respectful. The found a spot near the end of the exposed roots, one where there was just enough dirt to cover what they had without separating the bones from the tree.

They were brushing the last of the dirt from their palms, not quite looking one another in the eyes, when they heard a wooden _crack_ from above and looked up simultaneously to see River winding her way sinuously through the branches, dropping down barefoot onto the roots. She held her skirt with one hand, showing off bony knees and keeping some kind of cargo held up against her body.

"River!" Simon called, rushing up to her. Mal could tell that he was checking her over for injuries while trying not to be too pushy or invasive, but aside from a shallow cut on her cheek, she seemed fine.

"Boots," she said, holding out her free hand. Simon sighed and went to fetch them from the base of the tree, helping her to step into them and buckling them for her. River managed to look put-upon as he did, but made no move to shoo him away.

"Where did you go?" Simon asked when her feet were once again covered.

River looked at him like was impossibly stupid. "There was work to be done."

Mal looked at her skirt, then, and saw that she had dozens of purple flowers with prickly leaves held carefully in it, intact down to their roots, held together by clods of red-brown dirt. He couldn't help but grin at her. "River, you beautiful madwoman! Where'd you find those?"

River rolled her round eyes toward him and looked even more put-upon. "I told you I saw them. You were too busy thinking about landing."

"Why didn't you wait for us?" Simon asked.

"I had to be quick." Suddenly River dropped her skirt, pointing at the skull in the tree without looking at it. Flowers fell around her feet, some dropping between the tangled roots. Mal fought the urge to make a distressed noise and grab for them, focusing on River herself instead. "I didn't want to end up like her."

Simon furrowed his brow. "River, is there something dangerous out here?"

"You don't get it," River said, and Mal could see that her eyes were shiny with unshed tears. "She's _alone_. Someone made a promise to her and she's still here, alone. She's a fossil, and not even the good kind, because they left her."

She looked between them, searching their eyes. Whatever she was looking for, she didn't seem to find it, making a frustrated noise and grasping at her own hair.

"Fourth proximal phalanx," she muttered, and then, with increasing volume: "They were to be married, and then she died here, and everyone left — _everyone_ , even the one who promised not to, and she was left alone here, on a planet of nobody. She became nobody because they wouldn't even take her. Now the only ones who see her are bugs and tourists, and there's no good in that, none at all. Even her bones are lonely."

By the end of it Simon had her face in her hands, and she puffed great, heaving breaths against his sweating face, wild-eyed and unable to hold in her tears any longer.

"They didn't even bury her. She's not even a velociraptor," River finished, quietly. She wiped at her face with one soil-covered hand, smearing dirt over her cheek and under her eye.

"River, we would never leave you behind. You have to know that by now."

"He's right," Mal added. "I'm done with losing any of my crew."

Simon nodded. "We're a family, River." He broke eye contact with her then, briefly, to look up at Mal.

River twisted out of his grasp to follow his gaze, and Mal couldn't help himself: immediately, unbidden, the memory of Simon's kiss came to mind, and he knew River could tell from the face she made.

"Men," she said, and sighed, turning back to her brother. She cupped his cheek. "Didn't we have a talk about not being that kind of family?"

Simon's mouth opened, at that, but he couldn't seem to find anything to say, and closed it again as River broke free from his grasp, walking right up to the skull — or, more accurately, to the immediately right of the skull, where a small bone almost swallowed entirely up by bark just poked out. Mal hadn't noticed it before, but River pulled at it, loosening it enough to break it free from the tree's grasp, and held it aloft.

It was a small bone, but settled around it was a metal band, a tiny, dusky stone set into it. River pulled the band off and slipped the bone back into the tree, then put the band on her left ring finger. Small as it was, it was loose on her slim digit, and it moved as she wiggled her fingers.

"I do," she said, almost as if to herself, and then looked at the skull. "We're not going to be that kind of family, either."

Mal looked at Simon, who seemed mildly distressed, but who waited patiently as River turned and walked back to him. She dropped to a crouch, picking up the flowers she'd dropped earlier and cradling them in her elbow like a haphazard bouquet.

"Wash would have preferred it if they were dinosaur bones," she muttered, and then paused, looking up at Simon. "I know it's not possible. I'm not stupid. I just said he'd have preferred it."

"Right," Simon said, looking utterly lost.

River stared at him with wide eyes. "You could help, you know."

Mal knelt down to help as Simon did, but River pushed her messy bouquet into his arms, and jabbed a finger at him. "That's not for you. You're just holding it."

"'Course," Mal said, and watched her fish through the roots to find the rest with Simon. "Any chance you could show us where to get more of these flowers?"

" _Clotho belladonna_. Could be used to treat Henniker Syndrome. Sickness in the lungs. Inara thinks she has it, but she doesn't. Don't you think we should get back to the ship first?"

"Do you know how to get back?" Simon asked.

River dumped the last of the flowers into Simon's arms, glaring at him. "Obviously. And yes, I can show you where to get more."

She stood up, walking down the tree roots and back the way they'd come. After one dumbfounded moment, Simon followed her, and Mal followed him.

"That was easier than I expected it to be," Mal said. Simon smiled. "Though we still have some conversin' to do after we get more of these."

"I can hear your thoughts!" River called from ahead, not looking back at them.

"Coversin' only!" Mal called back.

"Only?" Simon asked, quiet, with a wicked grin.

"Well, there's a pretty offer to be discussed."

"I can _still_ hear your thoughts!"

Simon laughed, his cheeks glowing pink, and Mal thought: Yes, this is family.

**Author's Note:**

> Translations (or, at least, the _intended_ meaning behind my probably poor Mandarin):
> 
>  **Go shi!** : "Shit!"
> 
>  **Tai kong suo you di xing qui dou said jin wo de pi gu!** : "Stuff all the planets in the universe into my ass!"
> 
>  **Shuh muh?** : "What?"
> 
> Please feel free to correct any errors I have made.


End file.
